Sunday, December 7, 2008

Rebecca over there was pointing out a column from Kim Komando in which the hack expressed her dislike for paid posting. I take exception to Komando's prattle for a number of reasons.

First of all, the post I mentioned is packed full of Google ads, a bunch of other ads and links inviting hapless visitors to advertise on her site. Apparently, in Komando's world, selling ad space to the highest bidder is just fine.

Well, it's fine as long as you're not taking money to write a bit of an advertorial for something, of course. Phooey on that.

Hey, I avoided paid posts for some time until I discovered they were a way to make some easy money. I signed up for an account at Blogvertise and have been happily making money since then. I don't feel a bit bad about it, either.

Why? Advertising is common as sin on blogs. I figure, then, there's nothing wrong with finding something that makes money for us. Some people sign up with, say, Google Ads and have found great success with that service.

More power to them. Google Ads haven't worked worth a damn for me as those targeted ads work out horribly for me. If I gripe about lawyers, I wind up with a bunch of ads for area shysters. If I call Barack Obama a goon, I get targeted ads selling commemorative coins with his likeness on them. If I mention the American car industry deserves to fail because they produce garbage, ads pop up sending visitors to the Hummer Internet site.

Komando seems to approve of Google Ads (God knows she uses enough of them on her site), but hates paid posts. Shut the hell up, Kim. Your site is swimming in ads so you've got absolutely no room to talk.

Besides, have you ever listened to Komando's radio show? It's full of advice that anyone with access to a search engine can find. She's all about marketing and her radio shows comes across as a blasted infomercial. At least people can scroll right through my paid posts, whereas anyone listening to Komando's show has to put up with plug after plug for whatever crap she's selling.

Enough of that.

Something that really does bother me about blogs

Of course, everyone has something that annoys the hell out of them about blogs. In my case, I'm sick to death of java script. A little java script is fine, but some folks out there obviously subscribe to the idea that there's nothing wrong with overkill.

The latest annoying thing out there is illustrated by the photo I posted in this section. You've got some dancing guy that seems to slow down both my Firefox and Google Chrome browsers whenever he appears. I don't know what it is about that particular animated GIF, but my system absolutely hates it (and I don't have a bad computer -- 64 bit with plenty of RAM under the hood).

Clicking on that dancing fool will lead you to yet another social networking site. I'm not going to mention the site because I don't want to give them any free publicity. You'll see that dancing idiot pop up regularly, however, so look around a bit if you want to see what he's selling.

My blog isn't the fastest loading thing in the world, of course, but I have tried to speed it up by getting rid of the stuff that makes my site load too slowly. I hope to attract visitors rather than drive them off because they're annoyed.

Again, there's nothing wrong with a script here and there, but I can't help but wonder whether people actually take the time to see how quickly their sites load. If they did, I have a feeling we'd see a lot fewer dancing goofs, widgets that tell us where visitors are coming from, revolving content clouds and other things that just slow browsers down to a crawl.

16 comments:

Couldn't possibly be more on target. As far as paid posts, you do it perfectly. It is an occasional thing, and certainly not your reason for existence. Hey, if you can pick up some pizza money every so often, why not? I'm paying pretty big money for cable TV, and I'm getting tons of ads on that stupid thing. 4 minutes of commercials for every 10-15 of programming is typical. And you are spot on about loading speed. You blog has improved a lot, is quite fast loading, but I come across some that take so long, I just don't return. And they are loaded with so much "stuff" that no one cares about it just makes me wonder if they get it. I've seen bloggers whose blogs take forever to load, and they complain about no visitors. LOL

as for paid posting, i do it in all three of my blogs and even if people won't like it, i must say i am making a clean money out of it. so i don't care what people say. as long as i am expressing my own thoughts about what i am paid to write, i am not hurting others. :)

I use payu2blog, and while their customer support fails horribly (insisting that my blog was down after I moved servers, because they were obviously caching the old IP, even after I showed them 56/56 up reports from host-tracker.com, they still insisted it was down, or outright ignored me) I like the fact that they don't balls around. They know it's for cheating google ranks, so basically all you need to do is have the anchor with the anchor text they specify, and you get paid.

I use it as a catalyst for writing, often times it'll give me an idea for something to write about, although every so often I will have to contort what I'm trying to say in an awkward way just to fit it in in context.

I think the general complaint is that people think paid posting will make them lose some sort of editorial credibility - but the reality is no such animal exists in the blogging world to begin with. You probably give up a little bit to fit within the ToS of your provider, then you assuredly give up a little more to stay within the ToS of whatever ad system you're using, and then I'll guarantee most folks give up just about all of whatever's left just to appease their little circle of friends or whatever. If you have the self control to avoid this, you assuredly have the self control to exploit paid posting in a manner which doesn't let it exploit you.

Of course, there are the shysters who will say anything for a buck, particularly in the payperpost crowd - but one could make a convincing argument that the types of people who rave about the latest diet pills for a measly $20 probably didn't have any editorial credibility to begin with.

Personally, I did a couple of paid ops for Zenni optical, but I won't be doing any more because having read quite a few internet discussions on them about their terrible customer service and quality, I won't continue to knowingly lie just to make $10.

But if I can see something I might have written about anyway, and just for twisting my post to meet a few criteria and make a couple of guaranteed bucks along the way, why not?

I don't do the paid posts, would if I ever got around to it but so far haven't...but I can't stand that dancing avatar. I just want to smack it. When I first started seeing them I thought they were kinda cute but now they annoy the crap out of me.

I am not a huge fan of the blogs that automatically play music either.

I don't really know how to do the whole "montetize" thing. There are so many things out there that I don't know what I can trust. I don't like a blog that's too cluttered and slows down my computer either.

I thought I was the only one who hated that dancing guy. I've made a point to put those sites last on my list to visit for the day. Usually when that guy tries to load my Firefox slows down or completely freezes and I truly hate that.

As far as the paid blogging goes, I'm not against it. At the end of the day my blog is my blog and I will do whatever I want to do with it. If someone comes along and says they don't like my blog because I chose to make a few dollars off it then too bad.

Oh man, don't get me going on the Dancing Fool. LOL! It doesn't crash my browser, but I see him everywhere, lol. Another thing I hate are those noxious Project Wonderful ads. I dare not surf with my kids around, God know what obscene photo is going to show up with them. Yow.

So my blog is DYNAMITE?!?! Wooooo! (Now, if only stupid Google would listen and give me PageRank).

i agree with da old man, you tend to do it right mr. da hawg. i have gotten pretty good at sniffing out paid posts and you make it easy to see if i'm right with your tag for such posts. also agree with paul, if you don't like it, don't look.

that said i don't like it. and generally don't look. but i'd never take it upon myself to question someone wanting to make some cash.

you're right about komando's site it's got tons of "content" to block. hypocrite.

also agree with you on the use of java. throw in flash for me as well. i always have and always will hate that crap.

if you're using firefox, check out the ad block plus plug in. it's great out of the box so to speak and then you can use it to ignore individual aspects of sites such as obnoxious background images and what not. it's a sanity saver.

Da Old Man -- Thanks, Crotchety. I try not to beat people over the head with those paid posts too much, but I do like the extra income.

I'm glad my site is a little quicker. I try to keep all the junk to a minimum.

rare*jonRez -- The problem I had with PayPerPost is that they want me to put some script on my page. I don't know what it does, so I'll stick with Blogvertise for the time being.

Hey, I've got no problem with anyone trying to make a buck here on the InterTubes. Why not?

Sherry -- I've only been doing those for a couple of months and have made considerably more than I have with four months of Google Ads (I'm still waiting to cash out on Google, in fact).

Yeah. It's worth it. You get a little extra cash in your PayPal account here and there. I tend to blow mine on eBay and on stuff like gifts for my wife. Love it.

fwaggle -- Very astute as usual, fwaggle old bean. What editorial credibility? Hell, I see people just throw up their thoughts without any research at all constantly. Credibility? We're all just tossing out our opinions and they're worth what we paid for them half the time.

I've steered away from the scams (I hope!), credit card companies, gambling sites and other groups I hate. Hopefully, I'm promoting stuff that is actually useful. I try, at least.

Jen -- I hate that dancing goof. When I see him pop up, I'm almost certain he's not the only time-hogging script on that blog.

I was, by the way, listening to Motorhead's "Die You Bastard" when dancing fool popped up one day. Seemed to fit...

Grandy -- Well, figuring out what to write about can be pesky. I try to pick those sites/services that are useful or, at least, entertaining. Seems to work out OK.

Steve -- That's the way I look at it, exactly!

ImitationAngel -- Ditto. I don't get the bias against a few paid posts here and there.

Paul -- I hope it is just a fad!

Rebecca -- I've always been a fan of your blog. I'm a frequent visitor for a reason, you know.

Keep it up, you dynamite blogger, you!

Chris -- Well, I do try to make it easy for people to tell which posts are done for cash money.

I've tried NoScript and there's a problem with it -- you've got to allow each blog to see the Entrecard widget. Bugs me.

Count me in on being annoyed at the dancing guy. I never bothered to click on him and now I'm glad i didn't. As far as ads on sites...if they really do make money for the person's blog then okay, but sometimes you just get overwhelmed on someone's site because there are ads everywhere, even between posts. I don't like it, personally, but I won't knock it if it makes money. I just blog for the hell of it, so it isn't a big deal to me either way.

I purchased Reason Core Security based on Kim Komando's recommendation and then saw a YT video where this guy demonstrates just how awefull it is. It only scores like 50% compared to free programs out there that score close to 100%. No wonder my other virus program found a bunch of crap on the PC that Reason Core missed. I deleted that POS and got Avira...after trying AVG,Norton and Avast.